Title Card Tales: Mike Royce’s Snowpants Productions

End cards or “vanity cards” as they are known derisively/accurately, are those logos and nonsense that flash at the end of TV shows for two seconds. To be accurate, this year it was cut from 2 seconds to 1 ½ seconds. I don’t know why the studio needed that extra half second but I assume they sold it to Bud Light somehow.

Generally a vanity card is a perk afforded the creator(s) of the show and/or some of the executive producers. Most of the time it’s the same logo over and over but some people change it up. My old boss Phil Rosenthal’s “Where’s Lunch” featured a different meal at the end of every episode of Everybody Loves Raymond. Chuck Lorre is well-known for squeezing entire short stories onto his.

I first got to have my own vanity card on HBO's Lucky Louie, AKA the show that Louis C.K. did before the one that won all the awards. Around that time my dad digitized all his old Kodachrome slides, and I found a lot of the images hilarious and some of them made me cry. I cry easily so that’s just sort of a side note. Fuck you? Anyway it made me decide to make my end card a different old photo each episode. My friend Bill Rapp lovingly did the graphics. And here they all are for you Mike Royce completists out there AKA “Mike Royce.”

Sometimes the picture is tied thematically to the episode but not always. The first four photos rotated through all of Lucky Louie and the first four episodes of Men of a Certain Age. My production company name comes from the fact that “snowpants” is the punchline to the first joke I did onstage that ever got a laugh. Some would say the only joke.

This is my sister Jennifer sitting on the hood of a car, because in 1970, you were totally allowed to drive around like that. Nowadays, of course, you have all the worrywart parents and their “car seats” and whatnot. It’s a shame.

This is my sister Katie who we adopted from Korea just a few months before this picture. So behind that smile is a girl going, “What is this cold white shit and when can I go home?”

Me and my brother. I’m on the left, displaying one of my many faces that ensured a career behind the camera.

My grandfather, around Christmas 1965. That’s a box of Old Spice in the background but I’m sure he’s wearing it IRONICALLY. (End card from Men of a Certain Age, "Powerless")

Midstate Youth Hockey Association game circa 1972, and the classic end-of-game handshake. My brother and I are on the red team, “Burdick's Sports Shop.” The handshake is a hockey tradition that says “Sorry I just got done punching you forty times.” (MOACA, “Go with the Flow”)

My other grandpa owned a clothing store for 50 years. This never translated into me knowing how to dress. (MOACA, "Father's Fraternity")

My Great Aunt Aggie and my Uncle George, late 1960s. George was a bit of a wild child and so was Aggie. She smoked three packs of cigarettes a day and her favorite drink was Coke “with a little something in it.” She lived to be 94 and she is my hero. (MOACA, "You Gonna Do That the Rest of Your Life?")

My wife’s family on the Atlantic City boardwalk in the '60s. My wife’s dad is the guy with the pipe and the weird leather jacket, her grandma is in the white fur and beehive and my wife is the girl with the lollypop. I consider this possibly the greatest photo ever taken. (MOACA, "So You Want to Be an All-Star")

I love hockey. I played ice hockey for my whole child/teenhood and I still play street hockey to this day. I also was in musicals in high school. This is why you see me on the left, about to unleash a monster slapshot while wearing my white Jesus pants from Godspell. (MOACA, "Back in the S#!t")

My brother and a bunch of neighborhood playing kickball in the street because it was 1978. (MOACA, "If I Could, I Surely Would")

This cute little girl is my wife! And now I feel creepy. (MOACA, "Same as the Old Boss")

Me flanked by my cousins Danny and Brian, 1982 or so. This is about as cute as any of us ever got. (MOACA, "Cold Calls")

My wife's mom and grandmom sometime in the early '40s. They came from Germany to Louisiana, which requires a term stronger than "culture shock." (MOACA, "The Bad Guy")

This is my Aunt Agnes (not to be confused with Aggie). Sometime in the late '70s she tried getting into meditation, so naturally everyone in our family made fun of her and somebody snuck this picture to goof on. Keep sending out those space signals, hippie! (MOACA, "The Great Escape")

This is one of my favorites. My grandmother in the middle, my Aunt Mary in back, great aunts around... There's something about the overall disapproval vibe that makes me understand my Catholic upbringing. (MOACA, "The Pickup")

My sister Katie, BRINGING THE WIFFLE THUNDER. (MOACA, "A League of Their Owen")

My grandparents. These are the types of gifts you put on after a few beers. (MOACA, "Can't Let That Slide")

My other grandparents and their beloved dog Rusty. Here come the waterworks! Damn it I promised myself I wouldn't do this. (MOACA season 2, "Whatever Gets You Thru the Night")

Since this was possibly (and as it turned out, definitely) the last episode of Men of a Certain Age, I wanted look to the future somehow, so here are my kids essentially giving one of the great wonders of the world the finger. (MOACA, "Hold Your Finish")

This next batch is from 1600 Penn. They're square because I share the screen with Josh Gad's card.

My daughter would rather YOU NOT TAKE HER PICTURE PLEASE. (1600 Penn, "The Skiplantic Ocean")

My uncle Harry, who passed away during the time we were filming. He was one cool cat. (Enlisted, "Parade Duty")

My great uncle Martin. He moved from frigid upstate NY to Florida for much of his latter life. He was smart. (Enlisted, "Pete's Airstream.")

My Grandpa John who served in the Navy during WWII. Thanks Gramp! (Enlisted, "Randy Get Your Gun.")

My dad on the left, and all of my uncles on my mom's side, together at our family cottage for the annual Work Weekend. It involves a good deal of work and a great deal of beer. (Enlisted, "Rear D-Day")

My mom's family, as Catholic as it gets. I'm in the high chair. (Enlisted, "Brothers and Sister")

Me on the left, my brother on the right. Since our show's main characters are brothers I wanted to make sure I got one of mine in. We served in the Kiss Army. (Enlisted, "Army Men")

Finale! That's me with the hair and sunburned shoulders, in Aruba back in oh, 1988? With my two best friends since 7th grade, Stu and Bill. This image makes more sense once you've seen this episode. (Enlisted, "Alive Day")

[...] creator and 1600 Penn showrunner has collected all his vanity cards (which are family photos) in one handy-dandy place, complete with revealing captions about their meanings. Take a look and be entertained. Or take the [...]

Brian C Hall

I just watched the pilot for "Enlisted" and somehow I ended up here. Great show though. Very funny. I think it's a great time for a new military comedy.

I'm actually writing the pilot for a military comedy show based on my experiences in the Air Force and when I heard about "Enlisted" I was worried I had been beaten to the punch. But then I remembered that I'm not even in the industry yet and my pilot will likely never see a frame of film.

After a good, manly sob 'n' wail I watched the pilot for "Enlisted" and was relieved that it was different enough in tone from mine that there would be no real overlap. (Coincidentally, "Men of a Certain Age" is one the shows influencing the tone of my script.)

And then I remembered again that it'll be at least a decade or two before I'd possibly be in the position to make my show a reality and that that's the true reason for the lack of overlap. Ha ha sob.

I have to get back to writing but I just wanted to say that I really enjoyed the pilot for "Enlisted" and as a former military member, I think you all are doing something with the show that most of us will love. Can't wait to see more episodes!

Brian C Hall

Thanks for the links, I'm glad you guys are going to such lengths to get the little stuff right. Though, personally, I wouldn't call much of what I saw in the pilot a "screwup" per se. Little things here and there but, for the most part, in the military folks get away with all kinds of things because if no one says anything about it then you can do what you want. And in an organisation like the one you're portraying, I wouldn't be surprised if no one had said anything to them before. People slip through the cracks all the time and the military isn't the clean, always-in-regs, and well-oiled machine some might have you believe.

Though, personally, I'd rather watch a show with too much right than not enough. It always hurts when I watch a show or movie that didn't even bother trying to get the military aspect right. I love that the characters will be saying "Sarn't Major". I worked with a bunch of Army cats the last few years in and they were very adamant that it wasn't pronounced "Sergeant Major". Great detail.

Oh, and I'm glad to see Baron Vaughn on the cast. I've been a fan of his stand-up for a few years now and I'm happy to see him getting more exposure.

Keep up the good work and I'm looking forward to many more seasons of the show.

Mike Royce

Saw the show, loved it, have no social life, and will continue to do so. Do you have any explanation as to why Fox has buried your great show in such a terrible time slot? Seems obvious to me that it should be paired with Brooklyn Nine-Nine on Tuesday nights.

Zach

Love these logos! I am a huge fan of your work, was heartbroken when Fox chose not to go forward with Little Brother, but I got to see your logo that year on the underrated 1600 Penn. Good show. I AM LOVING ENLISTED!

Not a big fan of the Lucky Louie era font though. "Luckily" it improved.